A thought about migration.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 3,693.000 job openings in the United States in January 2013. The Manpower Group reported that 49 percent of U.S. employers cited talent shortages in 2012, leading to unfilled job vacancies. The most frequent fields in which there were talent shortages in the Americas were engineers, technicians, sales representatives, skilled trades workers and production operators.

If you assume that a million jobs could be filled from abroad with more open immigration for people in these fields, and that they might earn say $50.000 per year on average, then that would be a $50 billion shot in the arm for the economy. I suppose that the impact would be higher since these folk would spend money in the U.S. that they earned here, creating a multiplier effect. Moreover they would create more profits for their firms, and they would enable their firms to expand businesses in ways that would create still more jobs.

So why does Congress only allow 65,000 people per year with specialty occupations to come to the United States per year with temporary H-1B visas?